


T1ck T0ck

by Jabberwocky (Sisterwives)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Paralysis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-03
Updated: 2011-12-03
Packaged: 2017-10-26 20:25:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/287489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sisterwives/pseuds/Jabberwocky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After learning about Tavros’s accident, Aradia comes over to his hive to see how he’s doing. She’s not prepared for what she finds, but she’s determined to make it better. Fluff, cuddles, and mild angst.</p>
            </blockquote>





	T1ck T0ck

Aradia raised her fist and lightly tapped on the door to Tavros’s respiteblock. “Tavros?” she called softly, and her stomach turned when she heard the weak answer, “Come in.” Tinkerbull had been the one to let her into the hive, and she had climbed the stairs to find the door to Tavros’s block shut tight. It wasn’t like him to not answer when she rang the doorbell – in the past, she always knew when Tavros was coming by the sound of him thumping noisily down the stairs, taking the steps two at a time, before flinging open the door and greeting her with a huge, enthusiastic grin and playfully butting her head with his own.

She was afraid of what she would find. All she knew was that Vriska had controlled Tavros into jumping off a cliff and that her best friend wasn’t answering either his Trollian messages or his phone. Nevertheless, she opened the door to let herself in—

—and promptly stepped on an oogonibomb. “Oh no!” she said in dismay, lifting her foot and seeing the yellowish fluid leaking out of the crushed oogonibomb. “I’m sorry!”

Aradia looked up, and the first thing she noticed was the stark contrast between Tavros’s block now and its usual state of being. She had spent many nights at Tavros’s hive and vice versa, given that they were so close in proximity, both of them residing out in the quiet, rolling countryside. She knew that Tavros was the type to take excellent care of his gaming belongings, carefully stacking all of his oogonibombs in piles, arranging his Fiduspawn cards into various combat decks, and lining all of his host plushies along the wall.

Now, however, his respiteblock was a mess. Oogonibombs of all classes and colors littered the floor, cards were strewn everywhere, and several host plushies had been toppled over. Most worrying was the fact that his recuperacoon had been tipped over, sopor slime leaking out of the opening at the top and pooling on the floor.

Aradia skirted around the puddle of bright green slime and picked her way through the clutter. All of the meticulously arranged bombs and cards had been knocked off of their usual home on the fairy-printed futon. Instead, Tavros was huddled up in the corner of the sofa, hugging his legs to his chest.

He raised his head to gaze at Aradia with doleful yellow eyes. “No, it’s my fault, sorry,” he replied, and he sounded more dejected than she had ever seen him in the four sweeps that she had known him. Except for maybe that time when they were three sweeps old and were exploring on an adventure to find buried treasure and got lost, and the two of them were convinced that they were going to die. Just before the blistering sun started to rise, Aradia’s lusus had bounded out of nowhere and carried the two crying wigglers back to Tavros’s, where Tinkerbull was fluttering about nervously.

But this was worse. Tavros stared back down at the floor again as he continued, “It’s just, uh, been hard to clean up my block lately, because…”

Aradia waved his words away and interrupted, “Never mind the mess, Tavros. How are you?” Worried, she scanned Tavros’s body. His arms and face were covered in scratches and bruises, but at least it didn’t look like he’d broken anything in the fall…

Tavros looked up at Aradia, his face lined in anguish. “Aradia,” he said, his voice constricted with emotion. “I can’t walk.” He let go of his grip on his legs, and they dropped like a stone. Useless. Dead weight.

Rust-red blood ran cold as Aradia clapped a hand to her mouth. “Oh, Tavros!” she said helplessly, falling to her knees in front of him and placing her hands on his shins. She looked up at him questioningly, but he shook his head.

“I don’t feel anything,” he said, his voice raw with pain. Tears welled up in his eyes, and Aradia immediately got up and sat next to him on the couch. Tavros instinctively curled into her side, and she rubbed his shoulder reassuringly, fighting the lump in her protein chute as he spilled out his emotions.

“I don’t know what to do, Aradia, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I can’t live like this, I can’t even get in my recuperacoon at daytime, or go down the stairs, there’s pretty much no way I can survive, and I, I know I’m going to get culled any day now. Nobody needs a, a cripple who can’t move…”

“That’s not true, Tavros! _I_ need you,” she said forcefully, and she could feel him smiling faintly through the tears that were leaking onto her shirt. She held him close to her and reached out to take his hand, rubbing her thumb in small, soothing circles against his palm. She couldn’t keep quiet for too long before finally bursting out, “This is all my fault.”

Tavros sat up straight at that, very nearly whacking her in the face with his oversized horns, but sweeps of practice had prepared Aradia to swiftly duck underneath the horn.

“Wait, what, no,” he stammered, completely flabbergasted. “Why would you even say something like that?”

“Because it’s true, Tavros!” she insisted. “I was distracted when you needed me – I wasn’t there for you when I should have been, I wasn’t able to protect you when I could have done so. I didn’t look out for your well-being like I should have.” She sighed and reached out to run one hand through Tavros’s mohawk, fluffing it up where it had gotten matted from leaning against her. “I failed in my duties as a moirail.”

Tavros shook his head wildly and squeezed her hand tightly. “No, never,” he emphasized. “You’re the best moirail, I could ever ask for. And, uh, Vriska probably would have done it to me anyway, even if you were there, because I think that I, um, made her angry or something…”

Aradia didn’t say anything, not wanting to argue with Tavros. She couldn’t help but feel guilty no matter how much he reassured her that it wasn’t her fault. The fact remained that, because she hadn’t answered when he tried to contact her, he lost the use of his legs and had no way of getting around that didn’t involve crawling around on the ground, and he would not survive long on Alternia in that condition. She didn’t even want to think about how he was going to handle stairs.

She was suddenly struck by a deep burning desire to right the wrongs she had done, and a flash of inspiration hit her. She gripped Tavros by the shoulders and looked him in the eyes. “Tavros, I need you to listen to me. I know you say that I didn’t do anything wrong, but I know I did. I can admit that. But I am going to make everything okay, I promise.”

Tavros still looked troubled. “Not that I, uh, doubt you or anything, but… I don’t really think it’s possible to make me walk again…”

Aradia shooshed him, placing a finger on his lips, and Tavros fell silent. “Maybe not, but… during one of my digs at the ruins, I found this really cool ancient four wheel device! I left it there because I didn’t know what I’d do with it, but I can go back and get it, and maybe we can talk to the carpenter droids about putting ramps into your hive, and one for your recuperacoon so you don’t have to sleep on the floor…” She trailed off at the look on Tavros’s face.

“You’d do that for me?” he asked, his words thick with emotion.

“Of _course_ I would! Oh, Tavros, you need to stop thinking that you’re not worth having someone care about you.” Aradia reached out a hand to cup his face. “And besides, it’s my job to keep you safe. And since I failed to do that in the first place… let me do this for you. Please.”

Tavros’s answer was to throw his arms around Aradia and squeeze her as tightly as he could. She hugged him back and when she pulled away, she was determined to lighten the mood a little. “Come on,” she said, tugging lightly on his shirtfront. “Let’s make a host plushie pile.”

Aradia got off of the sofa and started gathering host plushies in her arms, but she soon heard a squeak from behind her, accompanied by a thud. She turned to find that Tavros had fallen onto the floor while trying to get off the futon and help her. Blaming herself for her stupidity, she rushed over to Tavros, who was staring down at his numb, ragdoll legs and looking more distraught than ever.

“Tavros, I’m so sorry, that was thoughtless of me! Hang on, let me just…” She hastily put together a makeshift pile out of all the host plushies she could find next to Tavros, who gratefully crawled into its soft embrace. She joined him in the pile, turning on her side so that she could watch Tavros, who had closed his eyes. His brow was furrowed, and he looked like he was in immense emotional pain. She reached out to hold his hand again, and at her touch, Tavros’s face relaxed slightly, and he opened his eyes again.

He turned his head towards her. “Thanks for everything, Aradia. I… I just…” He broke himself off, unable to articulate his feelings.

“I know. I know. And it’s the least I could do, since I wasn’t there with you when this happened,” she said, and she had to swallow around the lump that welled up in her constricted protein chute. She tried to control herself to keep her voice from shaking from combined sorrow and anger as she continued. “I am going to make Vriska pay for this. She is going to rue the day that she messed with Team Charge. And speaking of which, I guess… our FLARPing days are over,” she said, picking up his FLARP handbook from the floor next to their pile and running the tips of her fingers across the white Stat Bat that graced its cover. Tears sprang to her eyes, and she tried to blink them away before Tavros could notice. This would be the incident that changed their lives forever.

“Um, maybe…” Tavros said wistfully, but he looked up at Aradia and offered her a small smile. “But, we still have each other, right?”

Aradia choked out a blubbery laugh. Tavros’s image was swimming in front of her, misty from the film of crimson tears that clouded her vision. “Yes,” she managed to say, tipping her head to bump it lightly against Tavros’s. She closed her eyes, but a tear squeezed out anyway. “We do.”

She felt Tavros’s fingers brush against her cheek, carefully wiping away the wet trail the tear had left behind, and she blinked her eyes open to find Tavros looking into her eyes and smiling at her. Her blood-pusher ached at the gentleness and forgiveness in his smile, the way he didn’t blame her for not being there for him when he needed her. Guilt gnawed at her insides, accompanying the wrath towards Vriska that was steadily building with every moment she spent with Tavros. She didn’t deserve to have him as a friend, never mind as her moirail. With a sudden surge of anger, she decided right then and there that she was going to make Vriska pay. No one hurt her palemate like that and got away with it.

“Always,” Tavros said, his voice brimming with conviction.

Her anger dissipated for the moment as pity, white-hot and fierce, overwhelmed her. Not trusting her voice, Aradia simply threw her arms around Tavros’s shoulders and squeezed tightly. Tavros returned the hug, arms wrapping around her waist, and they stayed that way for a long time, foreheads resting against each other and unsaid words of comfort and compassion flowing freely as they cuddled in the soft pile.


End file.
